Time Asia - October 24, 2017

One day soon, young people will

run the government. These American

mayors show how they’ll do it

WHEN

RULE

MILLENNIALS

PHOTOGRAPH BY LANDON NORDEMAN FOR TIME

BY CHARLOTTE ALTER

THE “HALL OF JUSTICE” HAS JUST TWO RULES: A NIGHTLY GAME OF

beer pong, and a ban on talking politics after 8 p.m. The seven-bedroom

house in upstate New York was home to a motley crew of government

nerds—county legislators, city-council members, Ph.D. students and one

big guy called “the Mayor.” Svante Myrick got the nickname because he

was always bigfooting decisions and hogging the remote control. But also

because in 2011, at 24, he became the youngest-ever mayor of Ithaca, N.Y.

“The youngest generation is pretty sure that we can do it better than

the folks that have been doing it for a long time,” says Myrick, who was re-

elected in 2015 with 89% of the vote. “And the folks that have been doing

it for a long time are pretty sure that the youngest generation has no idea

what we’re doing.”

Young people have always rolled their eyes at the received wisdom

of the olds, but now they’ve got numbers on their side. Millennials—

born between 1980 and 2000—overtook baby boomers as the largest

segment of the U.S. population in 2015, yet they are led by one of the most